This Is That: Aimee Semple McPherson's Own Account

I spent the first thirty-five years of my life in the evangelical Friends Church. I am now Foursquare. That is a longer story than belongs here, but it explains why I have wanted to read the Foursquare movement's own founding sources rather than only what has been said about them since.

The place to start is a book Aimee Semple McPherson published in 1923, This Is That: Personal Experiences, Sermons and Writings, issued by the Echo Park Evangelistic Association in Los Angeles. This article describes the book and what it teaches. I am not attempting to evaluate her here, and I am certainly not attempting to settle the controversies that attached to her later life. I want first to let the woman speak for herself.

The title is the thesis

The title comes from Peter at Pentecost, quoting Joel:

"But this is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel; And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." (Acts 2:16-17)

McPherson applies that passage to the Pentecostal revival of her own day. Her central claim is that the same Holy Spirit poured out at Pentecost continues to work in the church through conversion and new birth, baptism in the Holy Spirit, prophetic ministry by both men and women, evangelistic power, divine healing, spiritual gifts, and revival and missionary outreach.

So the title is not the subject of one chapter. It is the argument of the whole book. What is recorded in Acts is not merely a memory. It is being restored in the present.

Two parts

Part one is her spiritual autobiography, and it is much the longer portion. It begins with family background, childhood, girlhood, conversion, and baptism in the Holy Spirit, and then moves through her call to preach, her marriage to the missionary Robert Semple, missionary service, the death of her husband, seasons of discouragement and renewed surrender, tent revivals, automobile evangelism, cross-country campaigns, ministry in major American cities, international campaigns, and the growth of her work in Los Angeles.

She does not present these events as a detached record. She interprets nearly every stage providentially. Journeys, hardships, bereavements, conversions, healings, financial provision, and open doors to preach are all read as evidence of God's direction.

Each chapter opens with a biblical text, so that her life is narrated through scriptural patterns: Jeremiah's call, Hannah's prayer, Jonah's flight and return, Elijah's revival, Christ's Great Commission. She understands her own biography as one instance of God calling and empowering an ordinary person for extraordinary service.

Part two preserves her preaching. The sermons include "What Shall I Do with Jesus?", "Which Road?", "Behold the Man", "Barabbas", "A Certain Man Went Down", "The Two Houses", "Tarry Until", "Plan of Redemption", "The Bride in Her Veil of Types and Shadows", "Isaac and Rebekah", "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit", "Soul Winning", "The Valley of Dry Bones", and "Praising the Lord".

These show the preaching for which she became known. She combines biblical narrative, dramatic description, typology, personal testimony, direct appeal, and vivid visual imagery. The sermons are not built merely to explain a passage. They are built to bring a hearer to a decision: repentance, faith in Christ, consecration, seeking the Holy Spirit, readiness for Christ's return.

The principal themes

Jesus Christ at the center. Although McPherson is strongly associated with Pentecostal experience, it is Christ rather than experience by itself who stands at the center of her preaching. She presents Jesus as Savior from sin, healer of the sick, baptizer in the Holy Spirit, and coming King. Anyone familiar with Foursquare will recognize those four roles. They became the framework of the Foursquare Gospel.

Salvation and personal decision. Her preaching is thoroughly evangelistic. Humanity is sinful, lost, and unable to save itself. Christ died for sinners, and each person must respond in repentance and faith. She reaches constantly for contrasting images: Christ or Barabbas, the broad road or the narrow, the house on sand or the house on rock, acceptance or rejection, readiness or unpreparedness. The hearer is rarely permitted to remain a spectator.

Baptism in the Holy Spirit. She distinguishes conversion from a further experience of empowerment which equips Christians for witness and ministry and is associated with the gifts described in Acts. This doctrine is foundational to the book, and her own ministry is offered as evidence that Pentecost remains available.

Divine healing. Healing occupies a prominent place. She reports prayer for the sick, testimonies of recovery, and healing services within evangelistic campaigns. She does not treat healing as a wonder for its own sake or as entertainment. She presents it as an expression of Christ's compassion and continuing power. It also functions as an argument: the healings are offered as signs that Jesus is not the great "I Was" but the living "I AM."

Evangelism and missions. The book carries relentless missionary urgency. She preaches in tents, churches, auditoriums, automobiles, and open air. Technology, travel, publicity, music, and large buildings are all treated as legitimate instruments for spreading the gospel. Notably, her ministry crosses denominational lines, and the volume includes reports and commendations from ministers of various churches, presenting revival as something that could renew existing congregations rather than compete with them.

Women in ministry. The title text itself speaks of sons and daughters, servants and handmaidens prophesying. Her life becomes an argument that the Holy Spirit may call and empower a woman to preach publicly, lead revivals, organize institutions, and exercise international ministry. It is worth noticing how she grounds that authority. Not in a modern theory of social equality, but in biblical vocation: God called her, the Spirit empowered her, and the fruits of the ministry confirmed the calling.

Holiness and consecration. Conversion is not treated as a merely legal change. Christians are called to surrender, obedience, prayer, purity, sacrifice, and service. Backsliding is possible, worldly compromise is dangerous, and believers must remain watchful. Her holiness teaching is revivalist and practical rather than systematic, appearing through appeals, warnings, and stories of renewed surrender.

The Second Coming. She presents Christ's return as personal, future, and possibly imminent. Sermons on the Bride, the Bridegroom, and prophetic types call Christians to live expectantly, and this expectation feeds the evangelistic urgency throughout.

How it is written

This Is That is not written like a modern academic theology. It is a revivalist book: autobiographical, emotional, dramatic, devotional, strongly biblical, testimonial, sometimes conversational, and frequently typological. She turns biblical characters, buildings, roads, journeys, and household objects into spiritual pictures. She may personify an auditorium, narrate an event as dialogue, or build an entire sermon around one large visual illustration.

The style reflects oral preaching. Some passages are repetitive or, by modern literary standards, highly enthusiastic. They also preserve something of the atmosphere of the meetings themselves, which a more restrained book would have lost.

How I would read it

The book is genuinely valuable as a primary source: for McPherson's early life and self-understanding, for the development of American Pentecostal evangelism, for the religious use of automobiles, tents, auditoriums, newspapers, photographs and visual drama, for the emergence of women as nationally prominent preachers, for the theological roots of the Foursquare movement, for the revival culture of the 1910s and early 1920s, and for the relations between Pentecostal evangelists and established Protestant ministers.

It should nevertheless be read for what it is: an autobiographical and promotional religious source rather than a neutral biography. She selects and interprets events in order to testify to divine guidance and to validate her ministry. Reports of crowds, miracles, healings, and providential events reflect her perspective and that of supportive witnesses, and strict historical analysis would want to set them beside independent evidence.

I do not say that to diminish the book. Nearly every spiritual autobiography ever written has the same character, including the Quaker journals I grew up reading. I say it because a reader who knows what kind of book he is holding will get more out of it, not less.

This Is That is best described as spiritual autobiography, revival chronicle, sermon collection, and early Pentecostal manifesto in one volume. Its unifying message is that Jesus Christ remains alive and active, the Holy Spirit still empowers the church, the gospel must be proclaimed urgently, and the experiences of the apostolic church may be experienced again. She tells her own story not chiefly to preserve personal memories but to persuade the reader of one thing: this is that.